Ohio Classics Girls Softball

The Ohio Classics website was started in 1997 (a couple years after the Ohio Classics organization was formed) and lasted for 16 years closing on Sept. 1, 2013.

When it was started, they were the first girl's fastpitch softball site in Ohio and one of the first in the U.S. Guestbook entries in it's early years showed comments from Nevada, Florida, Texas, New Mexico and many other states. It was quite the phenomenon. Rosters for all Ohio Classic teams were posted each year, and each person on the roster had their own page which had a photo of them from each year they were on a Classics team. The photo gallery consisted of well over 1500 pics of the teams at tournaments or special events such as team-building day, helping with Special Olympics, distributing food at homeless shelters, team parties and when they hosted their own local tournaments.

The Ohio Classics consists of travel teams of 10u to 18u ages. Depending on what year it was, sometimes there would be two teams of the same age level.

When Facebook started, many of the teams also started their own individual pages, and/or coaches used other commercial opportunities to post their rosters such as League Line-ups. The Ohio Classics website was no longer as active as it use to be, though it still was the centralized area for all Ohio Classics information such as rosters and try-out information.

David Beckham -- who started the Ohio Classics and whose wife built the website -- retired at the end of the 2013 season. It was decided not to renew the annual contract for web-hosting, so "The Coach's Widow" (a.k.a. his wife) posted a message on the front pages warning people to get any content they wanted off of it as well as suggestions on where to find information on Ohio Classics. On September 1st, 2013, the contract was not renewed and therefore the site -- then having nearly 3000 images and page files covering 16 years of existence -- disappeared :(